During the summer of 2019, a global team of experts put their heads together to define the key questions facing the UK government when it comes to biological security. Facilitated by the Centre for Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge and the BioRISC project at St Catharine's College, the group of 41 academics and figures from industry and government submitted 450 questions which were then debated, voted on and ranked to define the 80 most urgent. The final line-up includes major questions on future disease threats, including what role shifts in climate and land use might play, and whether data from social media platforms should be used to help detect the earliest signs of emerging pathogens. Other ...

Environmental pressures may have led humans to become more tolerant and friendly towards each other as the need to share food and raw materials became mutually beneficial, a new study suggests. This behaviour was not an inevitable natural progression, but subject to ecological pressures, the University of York study concludes. Humans have a remarkable capacity to care about people well outside their own kin or local group. Whilst most other animals tend to be defensive towards those in other groups our natural tolerance allows us to collaborate today on a global scale, as seen with trade or international relief efforts to provide aid for natural disasters. Using ...

Mandatory calorie labelling of alcoholic drinks could possibly address both alcohol consumption and obesity. An analysis published in Obesity Reviews summaries the results of studies that have examined consumer knowledge of the calorie content of alcoholic drinks, public support for labelling of calorie content on such drinks, and the effect of labelling on consumption. In the analysis of 18 relevant studies, there was moderate evidence that people were unaware of the calorie content of alcoholic drinks and that they supported labelling. Studies found no evidence that labelling affected consumption levels, but most studies were of low quality and were not conducted in real-world settings. "The ...

A recent analysis of published studies estimates that one-quarter of adults with breast cancer have cognitive impairment before starting therapy. The analysis, which is published in Psycho-Oncology, also found that many patients' cognitive function declines after receiving chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, and/or hormone therapy for breast cancer. "Our results suggest that cancer-related and personal factors may make a significant contribution to cognitive functioning," said lead author Aicha Dijkshoorn, of the University Medical Center Utrecht, in the Netherlands. The ...

During the lockdown in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, pregnant women had higher symptoms of depression and anxiety. The finding comes from a study published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, which also revealed that women with higher body mass index and lower social support were most affected. A total of 204 women accepted to participate in the study, which involved completing questionnaires related to depression, anxiety, and social support. The study's results "highlight the need to improve mental health care during pregnancy, ...

Previous studies have linked sleep deprivation and frailty with depression. A new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that examined their combined effect suggests that short sleep intensifies the impacts of frailty on depressive symptoms. Among 5,026 community-dwelling older adults in China, participants who were frail at the start of the study were more likely to later develop depressive symptoms. Also, those who experienced worsening frailty throughout the study tended to develop higher levels of depression. Short sleep exacerbated ...

A new study published in Arthritis Care & Research has identified 10 readily available clinical factors that may predict which patients will persistently use high doses of opioids in the year following knee replacement surgery. In the study of 142,089 Medicare patients with osteoarthritis who underwent total knee replacement surgery and had no history of high-dose opioid use, 10.6% became persistent users of high-dose opioids after surgery. Certain preoperative characteristics including demographics (age, sex, and race), history of substance abuse (opioids, alcohol, and tobacco), and medication use (benzodiazepines, anxiolytics, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) were predictors of persistent use of high-dose opioids after surgery. ...

Investigators have published a global review of mammal strikes with aircraft, noting that events have been increasing by up to 68% annually. More mammals were struck during the landing phase of an aircraft's rotation than any other phase, according to the article published in Mammal Review. By analyzing published information and mammal strike data from national aviation authorities in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, researchers found that bats accounted for the greatest proportion of strikes in Australia; rabbits and dog-like carnivores in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom; and bats and deer in the United States. Average mammal strikes per year ranged from 1.2 to 38.7 across the countries ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Feb 3, 2021)--Postmenopausal women often complain of painful intercourse or a lack of desire caused by decreased estrogen levels, which affect vaginal elasticity and lubrication. Survivors of breast cancer typically experience worse symptoms as a result of cancer treatments, and concerns exist regarding hormone therapies. A new study suggests that fractional CO2 laser therapy may help. Study results are published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). The menopause transition can subject women to genitourinary changes from a lack of estrogen and subsequent ...

BINGHAMTON, NY -- Most zoombombing incidents are "inside jobs" according to a new study featuring researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York. As the COVID-19 virus spread worldwide in early 2020, much of our lives went virtual, including meetings, classes and social gatherings. The videoconferencing app Zoom became an online home for many of these activities, but the migration also led to incidents of "zoombombing" -- disruptors joining online meetings to share racist or obscene content and cause chaos. Similar apps such as Google Meet and Skype also saw problems. Cybersecurity experts expressed concerns ...

Dogs have been faithful human companions ever since their domestication thousands of years ago. With various improvements in veterinary medicine in the past decades, their life expectancy has increased. However, an unfortunate side effect of this longevity, much like in humans, has been an increase in the occurrence of chronic and degenerative conditions. In humans, modern efforts to fight such diseases have culminated in the development of regenerative therapies, largely based on stem cells. These "baby" cells have the potential to differentiate and mature into many specialized cell types-- called "pluripotency." By transplanting stem cells and guiding their differentiation into desired cell ...

There are more than 350,000 angiosperms which are key components of ecosystems. It is now commonly accepted that their existence is essential for preserving a healthy environment and also for the production of food and raw materials. The growing world population and the challenges posed by climate change make the control of these natural resources one of the most crucial issues for all humanity in the future. In this regard, genome sequence information is of fundamental importance for understanding natural diversity and evolution of living organisms as well as for the design of breeding strategies aimed to produce new varieties with suitable traits. Although the first genome sequence of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana was produced more than twenty years ago, the sequencing ...

When most people hear "food contamination," they think of bacteria present on unwashed fruits or vegetables, or undercooked meat. However, there are other ways for harmful contaminants to be present in food products. Angelia Seyfferth, a member of the Soil Science Society of America, investigates food contamination coming from the soil where the plants grow. "It all comes down to the chemistry of the soil," explains Seyfferth. Most recently, Seyfferth has been studying rice. The elements arsenic and cadmium can be present in the paddies where rice is grown. She presented her research at the virtual 2020 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting. "Contaminants ...

Study using surveys of more than 1.1 million 13-15-year-olds from 140 countries between 1999 and 2018, finds that the prevalence of smoking cigarettes on at least one day during the past 30 days decreased in 80 countries (57%) but was unchanged or increased in 60 countries (43%). However, during the same time period, the prevalence of using other tobacco products, such as chewing tobacco, snuff, dip, cigars, cigarillos, pipe, or electronic cigarettes, levelled off or increased in 81 (59%) of 137 countries with available data. Surveys of more than 530,000 adolescents from 143 countries between 2010 and 2018, finds that 17.9% of boys and 11.5% of girls used any tobacco product on at least one day during the past month. Tokelau had the ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A team led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, reports a drug -- an estrogen receptor ligand called indazole chloride (IndCl) -- has the potential to improve vision in patients with multiple sclerosis, or MS. The study, performed on mice induced with a model of MS and the first to investigate IndCl's effect on the pathology and function of the complete afferent visual pathway, is published in Brain Pathology. The afferent visual pathway includes the eyes, optic nerve, and all brain structures responsible for receiving, transmitting, and processing visual information. In MS, a disease ...

Northwestern University researchers have developed a new approach to quantum device design that has produced the first gain-based long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) photodetector using band structure engineering based on a type-II superlattice material. This new design, which demonstrated enhanced LWIR photodetection during testing, could lead to new levels of sensitivity for next-generation LWIR photodetectors and focal plane array imagers. The work could have applications in earth science and astronomy, remote sensing, night vision, optical communication, and thermal and medical imaging. "Our design ...

Oxford, February 2, 2021 - In an upcoming issue of the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, published by Elsevier, undergraduate researchers from the University of Alberta's Radiation Therapy Program in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry describe how LGBTQ2SPIA+ patients face unique cancer risks, including fear of discrimination, higher incidence of certain cancer sites, and lower screening rates, resulting in more cancers detected at later stages. "I understand that there are different gender pronouns, I do not understand them all." To discover the knowledge, attitudes, and practice behaviors of the healthcare professionals treating these patients, the authors surveyed ...

Beaten ballots: political participation dynamics amidst police interventions is the title of the academic article by Toni Rodon and Marc Guinjoan, lecturers of Political Sciences at UPF and the UB, respectively, which seeks to look in greater depth at the effects of police interventions regarding political participation, taking the "repression-mobilization" nexus debate as a starting point. The study, published recently in the Cambridge University Press journal Political Science Research and Methods, focuses on the analysis of the referendum on independence held in Catalonia on 1 October 2017, when despite the police crackdown, 2,286,217 people voted, representing 44% of ...

Experts predict that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will eventually make our roads safer since the majority of accidents are caused by human error. However, it may be some time before people are ready to put their trust in a self-driving car. A new study in the journal Risk Analysis found that people are more likely to blame a vehicle's automation system and its manufacturer than its human driver when a crash occurs. Semi-autonomous vehicles (semi-AVs), which allow humans to supervise the driving and take control of the vehicle, are already on the ...

Recent global calamities - the pandemic, wildfires, floods - are spurring interdisciplinary scientists to nudge aside the fashionable First Law of Geography that dictates "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Geography, and by association, ecology, has largely followed what's known as Tobler's Law, which took hold in the early 1970s. But then came the novel coronavirus apparently has leapt from wildlife meat markets in China to the world in a matter of months. Global climate change creates conditions ripe for infernos in the North American west and Australia. ...

EL PASO, Texas - An effort led by Lin Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at El Paso, in collaboration with students and faculty from Howard University, has identified key variants that help explain the differences between the viruses that cause COVID-19 and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A team comprised of researchers from UTEP and the historically Black research university in Washington, D.C., discovered valuable data in comparing the fundamental mechanisms of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and SARS-CoV-2 -- also known as COVID-19 -- to better understand how ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Extensive sea ice covered the world's oceans during the last ice age, which prevented oxygen from penetrating into the deep ocean waters, complicating the relationship between oxygen and carbon, a new study has found. "The sea ice is effectively like a closed window for the ocean," said Andreas Schmittner, a climate scientist at Oregon State University and co-author on the paper. "The closed window keeps fresh air out; the sea ice acted as a barrier to keep oxygen from entering the ocean, like stale air in a room full of people. If you open the window, oxygen ...

Amazon's search algorithm gives preferential treatment to books that promote false claims about vaccines, according to research by UW Information School Ph.D. student Prerna Juneja and Assistant Professor Tanu Mitra. Meanwhile, books that debunk health misinformation appear lower in Amazon's search results, where they are less likely to be seen, the researchers wrote in a paper that was recently accepted to CHI, the top annual conference on human-computer interaction. In their paper, Juneja and Mitra noted that Amazon has faced criticism for not regulating health-related products on its platform. They conducted audits to determine how much health misinformation is present in Amazon's recommendations ...

The lockdowns and reduced societal activity related to the COVID-19 pandemic affected emissions of pollutants in ways that slightly warmed the planet for several months last year, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The counterintuitive finding highlights the influence of airborne particles, or aerosols, that block incoming sunlight. When emissions of aerosols dropped last spring, more of the Sun's warmth reached the planet, especially in heavily industrialized nations, such as the United States and Russia, that normally pump high amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere. "There was a big decline in emissions from the most polluting industries, and that had immediate, short-term effects on temperatures," said ...

Yale researchers are developing a skin cancer treatment that involves injecting nanoparticles into the tumor, killing cancer cells with a two-pronged approach, as a potential alternative to surgery. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "For a lot of patients, treating skin cancer is much more involved than it would be if there was a way to effectively treat them with a simple procedure like an injection," said Dr. Michael Girardi, professor and vice chair of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. "That's always been a holy grail in dermatology -- to find a simpler way to treat skin cancers such as basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma." For the treatment, tumors are injected ...